"Is designed to provide discovery, scoring and analytics across traditional and social media for academic administrators and faculty alike, providing solutions to assist in faculty recruitment and assessment, in development and in alumni engagement."

The enhancement allows academic institutions to search for scholarly material presented by academics in non-traditional venues (e.g. blogs, social media, etc.). According to mBLAST CEO, Mark Hatch, uncovering such material will help institutions "find the best candidates for both faculty and committee appointments and to track its presence."

According to mBLAST VP of Business Development, Rosette Cataldo, Academia represents a different beast when it comes to recruiting new candidates: "academics are less likely to participate in traditional job boards or social sites like LinkedIn." Since more and more scholarly material is being published outside of scholarly journals, Cataldo emphasized the need to "to search topically and find academic thought leaders through their mainstream media, blogging or social media activity."

About the author:Eric Carter
Eric the founder of Dartsand and Corporate Counsel for a specialty technology distributor. He is a frequent contributor to technology media outlets and also serves as primary legal counsel for multiple startups in the Real Estate, Virtual Assistant, and Software Development Industries. Follow me on Google+